Since you have the visibility, Jeffrey Sachs, why haven't you spoken up to balance the chorus of antagonists to the Iran deal? Not onesidedly, but with proper balance? What's the use of preaching to the choir? I have heard NO major political figure counter the negative stereotypes and bring up the simple, sad history of the U.S.'s relations with Iran, certainly not Obama. And that's a scandal. The President must know the score but is afraid to speak up. No doubt, Kerry has privately acknowledged our sins to his Iranian counterparts, but he has also apparently been muzzled. Incomprehensible!

Sure, the radicalized Noam Chomsky and the Howard Zinn types have always been ready to jump on the U.S. but they are discredited because they are obviously unbalanced and never have anything good to say about the U.S. After all, we haven't ALWAYS been as misguided as with Iran.

i find the absence of balanced, honest talk in the U.S. shocking and appalling. Not even Bernie Sanders is willing to speak up. If someone did it might not even be a leftie but a courageous man like Sen. McCain - although for some reason he has abandoned his more typical forthrightness in this case. Theodore Roosevelt, where are you when we need you?

It's not too late, Jeffrey Sachs: step forward from your safe and friendly media and get out there up front. I would if I had the credentials.

It is great pleasure to read an illuminating and honest writing on the subject of nuclear deal with Iran, after getting tired of custom-made Israel and/or Saudi payroll pieces recently. Thanks, Professor Sachs.

In hindsight getting involved with Vietnam may seem like a bad idea, but coming from an earlier generation, I and most Americans initially felt that support for South Vietnam was rational. After WWII The Soviet Union and its dedicated Marxist allies had taken over or attempted to take over independent nations wherever they could. Eastern European nations, Iran, China, Korea, Vietnam, Columbia, Nicaragua, Cuba. To stand aside and let Soviet surrogates undermine and take over South Korea would have been completely inconsistent with the Truman doctrine of containment - and the UN backed up the U.S. while the Soviet Union foolishly boycotted the Security Council on an unrelated issue. A parallel would have been to let the North Koreans take over South Korea.

The problem in Vietnam was Johnson's sleazy politics that soon began to discredit the U.S.'s role and build opposition in the U.S. Having experienced the result of mugwump politics in the Bay of Pigs attack on Castro's Cuba it seems likely that John and Robert Kennedy would have embraced different policies, either decisive by cutting off Soviet supplies to the North Vietnamese - never done until the late stages of the war, or if the will to resist was lacking on the part of the main population of South Korea, putting an expeditious end to direct American involvement.

The United States under John F. Kennedy had said "No to the warmongers" in October 1962, when the world moved closer to a nuclear war, with the US and the Soviet Union confronting each other over Cuba. A year earlier, in 1961 the CIA trained some 1.400 Cuban exiles, who came ashore at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba in an effort to overthrow Castro. After three days of heavy fighting, the invading Cubans were defeated, causing one of the greatest embarrassments to Kennedy. Many hawks blamed the debacle on his failure to approve air strikes in support of the operation.
In October 1962 US spy planes spotted Soviet missiles on Cuba. The developments brought Havana and Washington to the brink of a nuclear war. During the 13 October days, most senior security officials advising Kennedy had urge to take military action, which "could well have ended in nuclear annihilation". Kennedy overruled the warmongers, und opted for a naval blockade to stop the Soviet delivery of nuclear missiles. Khrushchev warned that it would be seen as an act of war.
Secretly, Kennedy suggested to Moscow that the US would dismantle its missile bases in Turkey if the USSR did the same in Cuba. Khrushchev sent 2 telegrams. The first offered to dismantle the Cuban bases if the US lifted the blockade and promised not to invade Cuba. The second demanded the Americans to dismantle the Turkish bases. During negotiations an American spy plane was shot down over Cuba. Kennedy ignored the attack, and agreed publicly to the first telegram, and secretly to the second. After 13 days, the crisis was over and diplomacy prevailed. He was right about the CIA and other hawkish advisers, posing a "threat to world peace". Instead he relied on diplomacy to "achieve a breakthrough nuclear agreement, the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963, three months before his assassination.
Some 50 years later Obama has also said "No to the warmongers" by concluding a nuclear deal with Iran. In the absence of a comprehensive agreement, which will significantly reduce Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, military action may be the only option, that many neo-con hawks and their ally, Israel contemplate, to force Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Yet in certain conflicts in the Middle East, Obama has agreed on taking military actions, without putting boots on the ground. His "leading-from-behind strategy in Libya had toppled Muammar Gaddafi. In Iraq and Syria he had urged regional allies to rally behind a coalition-led air campaign against ISIS. In Yemen and elsewhere he had relied on drones to eliminate Islamist terrorists. He sees the urgency to fight Islamist terrorists, yet he also faces the challenge of striking the right balance, without dragging the country into a protracted war.

When your perspective as a world citizen has changed from independence to dependence on US action, be it passive or active, you will adjust your view and behaviour. You will either complain or applaud (about lack of action, or too much action) about US action. You want to step away from what others do to you to what you should do. Whatever the stance of any US president towards its warmongers is and whether you are a US citizen or not, you should never fall into the trap of believing that her/his actions determine your faith.

There are many ways of looking at the opposition to the Vienna Joint Plan of Action. Professor Sachs highlights the role of the military who, by and large, prefer was to diplomacy. Other opponents, particularly in the US Congress, speak on behalf of Israel's warmongers and its warmongering prime minister. In Iran too there are war mongers who do not wish to see Iran have a normal relations with the rest of the world, particularly the US. The confluence of views of those in the Bush Administration (GW) who argued for the Iraq war and the torture of prisoners, Israeli prime minister and the Iranian hard liners should be a lesson for us all.
The Iranian people, however, are fed up with domestic and foreign warmongers: they voted clearly in favour of a candidate who wanted to negotiate with the world and end the nuclear deadlock. They do not wish (and have not been asked to express an opinion) their country to have nuclear weapons. They have demonstrated their support and happiness on all occasions over the past two years when the negotiators reached some agreement. And, there has not been any significant demonstration against the agreement anywhere in Iran.
One should also not ignore the fact that the relationship between US and Iran has a longer history than the hostage crisis and the CIA overthrow of the legitimate government in 1953. At least tens of thousands of Iranians, who now constitute the bulk of university professors and policy makers in Iran, have been educated in the US and have positive feelings towards the US. The Vienna agreement can build on this goodwill and lead to an improvement in the relations between the two nations.

I suspect that the problem is a little bit deeper tan the Narrative Professor Sachs has chosen on this occasion.

While agreeing on the aggressive nature of US geopolitics It is hard to believe that this is the sole responsibility of a few Government Agencies. Somebody, surely must have noticed the inordinate military budget (50% of Global Spending for 5% of theb population?) or the almost 1000 military outposts worldwide. Is there a limit?
Its sheer size tells a different story. One which makes War a Cornerstone of the system.
And yes, this is an issue for everybody. Not easy, though.
Rgds

This is the time to begin a broader US-Iran rapprochement and build a new security regime in the Middle East and the world that leads toward full global nuclear disarmament. To get there requires, above all, replacing war (including the CIA’s secret wars) with commerce and other forms of peaceful exchange.

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It is refreshing to see Sachs arguing for full global nuclear disarmament but that is not enough. We need a world where ALL weapons are under UN control and only for maintaining peace, not waging war. This can never be achieved unilaterally so global opinion has to demand it. See http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net

One might get the impression from Mr. Sachs that the head of the CIA wakes up in the morning and, depending on his mood, sallies forth to overthrow a foreign government or two before lunch -- with all operations neatly wrapped up and coated with a layer of "plausible deniability" by dinner time.

Too simple, Mr. Sachs. To much conveniently omitted from the narrative.

This analysis is one that I'd agree with in most respects. Prof Sachs did not mention two other Presidents. Nixon went along with the 'warmongers' via his pursuit and expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Even though George HW Bush had a stint as head of the CIA, he did not allow the warmongers to go all the way to Baghdad when he forced Saddam out of Kuwait.

Prof Sachs failed to note one other element of the proposed deal with Iran: in order to reassure the Saudis and others Obama has promised that the USA would supply them with conventional weapons. Ie, the industrial military complex will benefit from these sales!

The U.S. has already made a huge military blunder in the Far East recently as well: Employing Japan or the history revisionist/hostile/grandson of a convicted war criminal/pursuer of the glorified Imperialist army in his own image/hawkish/anti-democratic Shinzo Abe to counter China. The newly rolled out Pivot to Asia is all about using Japan as a counterbalance against China. Japan, who historically had an aggressive root to start with, will once again mess up the region once they cannot pay their JGBs or cannot solve their socail/economic turmoil. As Mark Twain quipped brilliantly, history repeats itself.

Excellent article.
Future presidents should study history - they might learn how their predecessors were controlled by the Security establishment.
In Gore's book on his time as VP he reports that 6 days a week the security establishment got the first 1 1/2 hours to explain their point of view. Given that level of brain washing, it is not surprising that Presidents are in the thrall of the warmongers.
A president that had security briefings only once a week, Friday afternoon at 4 for 1 hour, would have a much more balanced view of his real mandate.

"...If I could come back to one point: it is essential that people focus just as much on the challenges of the scenario in which Iran complies with the agreement as the scenario in which Iran fails to comply. And I am much more worried about the former. That will pose the greatest strategic challenge. To put it bluntly, I am more worried about the long-term consequences of Iranian compliance than I am about the short-term consequences of Iranian cheating..."

Source: CFR interview with Richard Hass on its own blog.

#What this really means is that should US- Iranian diplomatic relations gets re-established - it'd be a negative for Israel. Haas is more concerned about Bibi's staying power than the efficacy of JCPOA.

I have been reading "The Brothers," a joint biography of Eisenhower-era CIA director Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The wooden headedness of the Dulles brothers, the combination of arrogance and ignorance, is depressing because the parallels with the thinking underlying today's policy making in Washington is so similar.

If the Iran nuclear agreement is defeated, the US will be headed into a troubled future beyond anything it has yet experienced.

How refreshing it is to hear from an American who is not clambering for war. What ever happened to the America the world knew and admired - an America that avoided war and an America that helped nations in need.

As a venerable, retired historian, who has admired an respected America for most of my life, it saddens and worries me that the American military/industrial complex has taken over the American political system, as former President Dwight Eishenhower warned in 1961.

While I still love American people, I am losing faith in the American political system, which now appears to be run by political action committees, rather than the American people.

I believe it is far more complex than you assert. The Middle East is a complete mess - but it seems that the current strategy is to achieve some equilibrium in the region - now that Iraq and Syria are now longer powers - the game is played with Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

U r right, middle east is a mess!It is a game played by many equal player viz Iran,Saudi,Turkey, Egypt,along with Israel. What the deal would do to Iran that,it will give Iran a life line, thus making it stronger than before.But the mistake it can be,in worst case scenerio, if it becomes a proxy of Russia in the zone ,as it is the case now. In that case,USA will loose valuable allies in Saudi & Israel. It s tough to imagine current Iran rulers are cozying with Washington.
In the long run,perhaps Russia ,china will come out as a biggest gainer, along with Iran.Saudi has most to loose!

Perfect Prof Jeffery Sachs. You criticises your government when necessary and praise when it deserves it. The hawks in both Washington and Tehran can go to hell. We're for peace, enough with wars. Kudos Obama, John Kerry and the ever brilliant and incorruptible Prof Sachs.

Writer is right to point out that ,USA's security has been threatened by Saudi funded Sunnis terrorism not by Iran funded shi at ,moreover USA was never a party to their Shi'a -sunni quagmire. So by chipping USA ,Saudi gained more than USA,for that matter, even than Israel.So long Iran has been cut off from outside world ,it serves Saudi's interests than anybody else's

Interesting that this article goes back as far as JFK. But it should go back just a bit further, to Ike's farewell address. Remember the 'military-industrial complex'? There is money in war. Every time you launch a smart bomb or expensive missile, executives at the big contractors get a bonus check. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. But you get the idea.)

Warmongering is big business. Some might say it is the biggest business of all. When businesses can contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns (via super PACS) while individuals are limited it is no surprise that the warmongering is perpetual.

This guy is trying to retrieve his academic prestige after the nonsense he (and Stieglitz/Gailbraith) contributed here to the debate on JanisV role in rescuing Greece, since last Feb. He must have been surprised when JV was fired by Tsipras, he went out to discredit his PM, claiming Greece macro-economy was unsustainable for more than 30 years....i.e Grexit was his goal (NS interview).

On Iran he's again shouting at the wrong *warmongers*. The real warmonger is (King) Bibi who seems to claim the right to officially intervene in the sovereign deliberations of US Congress on the Iran-P5+1 Deal. Why?

Imagine if Russia, China or Iran did what Bibi's doing to organize the defeat of JCPOA.

BTW it is not a Treaty, as Sachs claims. It's simply a MOU which is the prerogative of the Executive under US system. That's why, in the final analysis, Congress cannot stop its final implementation. [It ain't a Treaty for Senate ratification.. ]

Sachs doesn't wish to discuss the Dimona Nuclear Site of the Israeli with +300 WMD. It is the causus belli of ME strategic instability - ie. raison d'etre of Iranian nuclear program.

As stated by Mr Sachs, the CIA has gone on to topple dozens of governments, in all regions of the world, with no accountability there or at home. The brief summation of presidents action or inactio0n is accurate along with covert wars. With all of the CIA operatives last year in the seven hundred and fifty million dollar US Embassy in Baghdad one questions how they could have not seen IS forming under their noses.

Looking at American foreign policy and arms contracts since 2oo3 one also questions if it is a Middle East implosion rather than an explosion that is being created and controlled from Washington. Like minded academics and scholars will agree that the ability to not only engage Iran in an agreement, but to have it as a done deal, is truly a feather in the Obama cap.
The failed foreign policy in the Middle East by successive US governments has been applauded by the industrial military complex and the warmongers that lobby government in attempts to sell anything from bread to bombs.

How much control or influence has Israel had on Congress either in an overt or covert manner in the attempt to ultimately topple the Islamist regime. Currently Netanyahu is making some wild statements regarding the deal with Iran as if America has sold out to Iran.

The next wise move that Obama could chose is to set up an independent referee in the Israeli/Palestinian problem and for America to step down from this role, official or otherwise. Because of ideological differences between Israel & Iran it would be prudent to have Israel terminate and remove any weapons grade uranium & or plutonium as a good will gesture.

Whilst Israel remains the only nuclear capable state in the Middle East sustainable peace is questionable. This is a separate matter to the fact that Israel has warmongers and is in the top ten arms manufacturers in the world. The Obama government has little time left to build diplomatic bridges in the Middle East, but it could go a long way to establishing solid foundations for the next US President to continue to find effective peaceful solutions through diplomacy rather than the warmongers.

First good article of Sachs for long time. Israel is the dangerous warmonger in Middle East resisting any peace treaty with sunni nor shia governments. Divide et impera is Israel's strategy in the region.

After doing nothing to prosecute the crimes contained in the false pretenses under which we waged the Iraq war, and after gleefully presiding over the destruction of states in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, in each case feeding violent extremists as a side effect, it is a welcome consolation prize for Obama to take some basic steps toward making peace with Iran. I am upgrading his grade for foreign policy from an F to a D-.

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